National Tree Week 2016

26th November to 4th December

CHANGING VIEWS

As National Tree Week – the UK’s biggest annual festival of trees – approaches, The Tree Council is encouraging everyone to consider how they can change views for the better by planting and celebrating trees.

Across the country, views of the landscape are changing for the worse as more and more trees fall victim to invasive pests and diseases. National Tree Week provides communities with the impetus to fight back by planting the trees of the future and attempting to change the view for future generations.
Each year, the festival inspires around a quarter of a million people to get their hands dirty and plant up to one million trees. This year is no exception, and fun, worthwhile and accessible tree planting events are taking place around the country, organised by The Tree Council’s member organisations, which include voluntary bodies and local authorities, as well as our network of 8,000 Tree Warden volunteers, schools, community groups and others.

National Tree Week has an added resonance this year as 2016 is the 300th anniversary of the birth of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, the famous landscape architect who transformed views from so many of our best loved country estates, parks and gardens. He was nicknamed ‘Capability’ due to his tendency to tell his clients that they had ‘great capability’ to improve the landscape. Few of us have large country estates at our disposal, we each have the ‘capability’ to change views by helping to plant more trees.

For those who don't have the opportunity to plant a tree, there are plenty of other ways to get involved in National Tree Week. People can celebrate trees by contributing a tree story or memory towards the Charter for Trees, Woods and People, which launches in a year's time in November 2017. Or they could 'dress' a favourite local tree during Tree Dressing Day (3rd December 2016), which falls on the last weekend of National Tree Week.
Whichever way people choose to mark the occasion, National Tree Week encourages individuals, communities and families across the UK to change their views about the value and significance of trees in their lives.

Pauline Buchanan Black, Director-General of The Tree Council, commented: ‘Wherever we live, there’s no better way to change the view than by adding trees to it. We have so many reasons to celebrate trees: they shelter us from the elements, reduce noise levels, improve air quality and attract an abundance of wildlife for us to enjoy – and our views of them change with the changing seasons. Communities can help change views from any window, along any street or of any park or green space by planting trees during National Tree Week and throughout the bare root tree planting season.’

Further information about National Tree Week, including a downloadable poster, press release and an interactive Near You map, can be found here.

Don't forget, you can share interesting tree facts, images, and musings on social media throughout the festival using the hashtags #NationalTreeWeek #ChangingViews and #TreeCharter